How to get in tune with the cosmos for $59

Meditation? Tai chi? Prayer? Bible study? Nature walks? Yoga? Nyahhhh…too much trouble, too time-consuming, too unreliable. For my money ($59 at Costco, to be exact) the best way to get in tune with the cosmos is Casio’s Tough Solar G-Shock Atomic watch. I picked one up at the Costco store in Bend last Sunday and ever since have been feeling much more grounded to the rhythm of those amazing cesium atoms in Boulder, Colorado.

This is my second atomic watch. Since Casio makes such reliable watches, and watch batteries seem to last for years and years now, I suspect that Casio purposely engineers some rapid obsolescence into their non-metal watchbands—which I’ve found tear and break well before the watch stops running or the original battery runs out.

Regardless, this was a good excuse for me to upgrade to a solar-powered atomic watch, which I came to feel was needed for the proper wrist-balancing of cosmic microscopic and macroscopic properties, and, by extension up my arm, across my shoulder, and into my cranium, psyche-balancing as well. The Casio watch is not strictly solar, also recharging via other light sources, but since almost all Earthly energy ultimately derives from the sun, it is fair to say that I am now chronologically connected with both the tiny inward world of cesium atoms and the huge outward world of the sun’s natural nuclear fusion reactor.

Near the bottom of the page of the previous link I learned that photons formed in the core of the sun work amazingly hard to get to the receptor in my G-Shock watch: “It takes a photon approximately 100,000 to 200,000 years to reach the surface!” Well, thank you, photons. I was happy to wake up this morning and notice that the charge level indicator on my watch finally had reached the “high” mark, due to your diligence (and my own dedication to keeping Solie, as I’ve come to call my new techno-friend, out in the open air rather than hidden under shirtsleeves.)

Laurel, as you might expect, is not nearly as thrilled with Solie as I am. But, hey, three’s a crowd when it comes to the intimate relationship between a man and his solar-powered atomic-controlled G-Shock 200-meter-water-resistant watch. The first morning after it successfully synchronized by radio with the atomic clock in Boulder, I excitedly rolled over in bed and told Laurel, “I am now exactly in tune with time!” With a yawn of wifely blaséness she said: “Let’s see what my watch says” (her watch is an archaic Casio stone-age model, which she never bothers to sync with a time signal).

“8:12 and 14 seconds” said I.
“8:12 and 26 seconds” said she.
“Hah! You’re so 12 seconds off!” said I.
“Hah! I’m just 12 seconds off!” said she.
Vive le difference. Most women never will appreciate the importance of being precisely in tune with the cosmos, which probably explains how Casio came up with their poster person for the G-shock watch.

Comments

[Keith]

I've been wondering why I've been feeling a bit "off" lately. I must be due for a new timepiece.

[Isaac Laquedem]

You could tell her that if every day she wakes 12 seconds earlier than she has to because her watch is fast, then over 30 years she will miss out on almost 37 hours of sleep.

[Rob]

Great post. I have been looking for an excuse to buy this watch since seeing it in Costco. Well done. My wife would/will have a very similar reaction. The only difference is that even if here watch were 12 minutes or 12 hours off, she'd still have the same reaction.